Learning Laravel: The Easiest Way

Fastest way to learn developing web applications using

Laravel 4 framework

Jack Vo
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/learninglaravel

This version was published on 2014-02-03

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing
process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and
many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once
you do.

©2013 - 2014 Jack Vo

Tweet This Book!
Please help Jack Vo by spreading the word about this book on Twitter!
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The suggested hashtag for this book is #LearningLaravel.
Find out what other people are saying about the book by clicking on this link to search for this
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Contents

PART 1: BASIC INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Welcome to Learning Laravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
A Special Thanks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Structure of The Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Revision History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Introducing Laravel 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Say “Hi” to Laravel 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Laravel History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Laravel is a MVC Framework? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Places to Learn Laravel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

PART 3: AN ALTERNATIVE LARAVEL DOCUMENTATION . . . . . . . . . . 10

A Guide to Install Laravel 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
What We Need to Install Laravel 4? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Installing Laravel on Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Installing Laravel on Windows 7 + Windows 8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
A New Faster Way to Install Laravel 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
PART 1: BASIC INFORMATION
Welcome to Learning Laravel
Introduction
Hi! My name is Jack Vo. It’s great to know that you’re reading my book. I’m a designer and
web/mobile game developer. I have more than 7 years experiences in developing and designing
dynamic web applications, as well as mobile apps. I can build Wordpress/Drupal/PHP websites,
mobile games and… of course, Laravel web applications!
I have been building many websites and mobile applications since a long time ago. I’ve been also
reading many books and watching many video tutorials about programming. Therefore, I’m sure
that I can bring to you a book that helps you learning Laravel easily.
In my opinion, Laravel documentation is good. However, for the beginners, it’s not easy to follow.
I will try to guide you through all the troubles and provide you the best experiences! After reading
this book, I’m sure that you can develop Laravel web applications fast and efficiently.
I design this book for beginners, developers of all levels. However, if you’ve known Laravel already,
this book is still a good resource for you. Let’s think it as a clean and clear alternative documentation.
Here we go!

A Special Thanks
Thank you for purchasing this book.
If you want to help me finding typos and other issues, or want to give some feedback, feel free to
contact me at:
www.twitter.com/LearningLaravel¹
or
www.facebook.com/LearningLaravel²
or
www.LearningLaravel.net³
Here’s a list of people who have helped me to bring this book to you:
¹http://www.twitter.com/LearningLaravel
²http://www.facebook.com/LearningLaravel
³http://www.LearningLaravel.net
Welcome to Learning Laravel 3

• Janie - my special one.

• Taylor Otwell - without him, there is no Laravel Framework, there is no Learning Laravel
book as well.
• Jeffrey Way - a great contributor to the community, I’ve learned a lot from him.
• Peter Armstrong - thanks for the awesome Leanpub! I’ve been waiting for you guys a long
time.
• You - yes, you, thank you for supporting me by buying this book.

Once again, thank you very much.

Translations
If you’re interested in translating this book into a different language, please contact me at:
[email protected]⁴
I will offer a 50/50 split of the the profits from the translated copy.

Structure of The Book

A note about this book

Please note that I may change the structure of this book and some contents in the future
(adding and removing things) so make sure to keep a copy of it if you like that version:

Here’s how things are organized:

PART 1: BASIC INFORMATION
- Welcome to Learning Laravel
This section will provide you a basic information about the book.
- Introducing Laravel 4
You want to know about the history of Laravel? Why should we choose it as our PHP framework?
Let’s find out! If you don’t want, just skip this section, don’t worry, you won’t lose anything.
PART 2: BUILDING APPLICATIONS WITH LARAVEL
- Chapter 1 - Building Our First Website
⁴mailto:[email protected]
Welcome to Learning Laravel 4

We dive into building some simple web applications right away. It’s the best way to learn Laravel.
While some other programming books teach you the basic things first, I know all of us love to do
something while we’re learning.
- Chapter 2 - Building A To-do List Application
We have a fully responsive home page from Chapter 1. We will use it as a template for our To-do list
application. In this chapter, we learn more about Laravel special features, such as: Blade Template,
Schema Builder, Eloquent ORM, Controllers, Composer and Artisan.
PART 3 - AN ALTERNATIVE LARAVEL DOCUMENTATION
If you’re a Laravel programmer, you can read this section as a documentation and learn more about
it. If you’re a beginner, don’t worry, you will be a Laravel programmer soon. There are many design
philosophies and principles in this section as well.
PART 4: LARAVEL CHEAT SHEET
If you want a cheat sheet for Laravel. Here it is.
PART 5: BUILDING A COMPLETE CMS FROM SCRATCH
- Chapter 2 - Building A Responsive Website From Scatch
Here we’ll build a dynamic website using our knowledges from the book. In the end, our application
looks like this:
Welcome to Learning Laravel 5

Style Vintage Theme

This is one of my themes on Themeforest. If you love the theme, you can buy it at the link below
right away. If you worry about the price, you can also send me a message, I will give you a big
discount:
Style Vintage Drupal Theme⁵
APPENDICES
- Basic HTML5, CSS3, Twitter BootStrap and PHP knowledge
If you don’t know PHP, you don’t even know how to code, this section is for you! You can skip this
part if you like as well because it’s for absolute beginners.

Revision History

A note about revision history

One important thing about the book is that, it’s published while in progress. This means
that the book is available in an incomplete state, but will grow over time into a complete
title.
⁵http://themeforest.net/item/style-vintage-vintage-responsive-drupal-7-theme/5383210?ref=StyleMultimedia
Welcome to Learning Laravel 6

All future updates will be provided for FREE.

The current version of this book is 0.2.
Version 0.1: Starting to write Part 1.
Version 0.2: Starting to write Part 2,3,4.
Introducing Laravel 4
Say “Hi” to Laravel 4
I’ve been developing web applications for a long time, so I know that, developing a whole website
from scratch can be very complicated and tedious. There are many potential bugs, and you have to
think all complicated logic by yourself. A lot of works to do and it could take a lot of time. Fortunately,
Laravel has come and saved us! Many developers around the globe are using its beautiful, clean code
to create their great web applications.
You can start to build a Laravel application within a few minutes! It’s always a fun process. Laravel
gives you right tools and nice ideas to help you build your website faster, more stable and very easy
to maintain.
What can you create using Laravel? Well, a lot of things! From simple blogs to nice CMSs (Content
Management System), eCommerce solutions, large scale business applications, social websites and
more.

Laravel History
In 2011, Taylor Otwell, a great web developer has created an open source PHP framework, he called
it Laravel. For only just 2 years, many developers around the world have been developing and using
Laravel to build their applications. Laravel has come to version 4.1 today. It has many features such
as built in web applications, session management, database management, Composer and many many
more.
Laravel is a full stack framework, it means that you can develop web application completely from
scratch using its amazing database wrapper called Eloquent ORM and its own templating engine
called Blade. Many problems in the process of creating web application have been solved by Laravel.
Laravel is a great tool, a great time saver to help you build things faster and faster. There are many
reasons for using Laravel to develop web applications. One of the reasons is, Laravel has a welcoming
and supportive community. Unlike Symfony or Zend framework, you can find many code snippets,
tutorials, courses about Laravel, especially version 4. Even though the Laravel 4 has just been released
a few months ago.
Laravel is not only Taylor Otwell’s product. It’s the product of a big community. It’s an open source
framework, thus hundred developers worldwide have been providing many new features, bug fixes,
ideas. You can easily ask questions in the forum, or through Laravel IRC channel. Want to join?
Register here:
Introducing Laravel 4 8

Laravel Official Website⁶

If you’re a mobile developer, you find a right way to develop your web backend application. Laravel
supports JSON very well.
The syntax of Laravel is very clean and easy to follow. The methods, functions are well defined.
Sometimes you can even guess them without looking at the documentation. You can also create
your own rules, your own way to write your code. Laravel gives you a lot of freedom. You can also
maintain your code or upgrade it to a new version easily.

Laravel is a MVC Framework?

MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern is very popular and many developers are using it for their
application today. Laravel also loves the MVC. You can find folders called models-views-controllers
inside Laravel. If you don’t know about MVC, Laravel will help you to master it easily by just
developing application with it.
So what is MVC? Basically, it’s a architecture pattern that enforces seperation between models
(information), controller (user’s interaction) and view (models’ display). Simply put, it helps to
seperate your applications to many small parts in an organized structure. The main benefits of using
MVC pattern is that, it helps you to change, extend and maitain your applications easily.

Want to learn more about MVC?

Don’t worry about it too much, you can learn more about it in the later chapter.

This section is still updating

I want to keep this part short because I think it’s much more fun for you to start “playing”
with Laravel right now. So we will come back this chapter someday. Now, let’s start to do
something fun.

Places to Learn Laravel

Laravel is a fast growing PHP framework. There are many places, books, tutorials to learn about it.
You can find them here. I will try to update this section frequently.
- Websites/Blogs:
Tuts+ Premium⁷ - a good place to learn Laravel.
⁶http://laravel.com/
⁷http://tutsplus.com
Introducing Laravel 4 9

Laravel.io⁸ - Laravel knowledge base.

Laracasts⁹ - Laravel Screencasts by Jeffrey Way.
Larasnippets¹⁰ - Laravel snippets collected by John Kevin Basco.
Nettus+¹¹ - Great web development blog with lots of Laravel articles.
Laravel Tricks¹² - Sharing ways of using Laravel.
Laravel Official Doc¹³ - Laravel official documentation.
- Books:
Learning Laravel: The Easiest Way by Jack Vo¹⁴ - this book :)
Laravel Testing Decoded by Jeffrey Way¹⁵ - Introduction to TDD, this book teaches you how to test
your Laravel applications.
Code Bright by Dayle Rees¹⁶ - A first book about Laravel 4. Code Bright contains many basic things
you love to learn.
From Apprentice To Artisan by Taylor Otwell¹⁷ - Written by the creator of Laravel, it’s good for
advanced developers. Covers dependency injection, interfaces, service providers, SOLID design, and
more.
Implementing Laravel by Chris Fidao¹⁸- This book focuses on an overall approach to coding with
Laravel, including code organization along with useful patterns for creating real-world testable and
maintainable code.
Getting Stuff Done with Laravel by Chuck Heintzelman¹⁹ - A guide taking you through application
design, building console applications, and developing web applications.
⁸http://laravel.io
⁹http://laracasts.com
¹⁰http://larasnippets.com
¹¹http://net.tutsplus.com
¹²http://laravel-tricks.com
¹³http://laravel.com/docs
¹⁴https://leanpub.com/learninglaravel/�
¹⁵https://leanpub.com/laravel-testing-decoded/
¹⁶https://leanpub.com/codebright/
¹⁷https://leanpub.com/laravel/
¹⁸https://leanpub.com/implementinglaravel/
¹⁹https://leanpub.com/gettingstuffdonelaravel/
PART 3: AN ALTERNATIVE LARAVEL
DOCUMENTATION

This part will be an alternative documentation. You will learn how to install Laravel on different
systems, read this part as a cheat sheet, and know everything about Laravel framework here.
A Guide to Install Laravel 4
I will show you how to install Laravel 4 on Mac and Windows from scratch. It means that you will
know how to install PHP, Mysql, Mcrypt, Composer and everything to get your app running!
Please note that there are many ways to install PHP, Composer, Mcrypt, etc. I will show you the
basic ones first, and then I’ll update other methods later. If you love to do it in a different ways, go
ahead and do it! You will learn a lot by doing it yourself.

What We Need to Install Laravel 4?

Laravel 4 requires the following things to run:

1. PHP >= 5.3.7 (version 5.3.7 or newer)

2. MCrypt PHP Extension
3. Composer (optional, but you will need it to build Laravel 4 applications)
4. Openssl should be enabled in php.ini.

Installing Laravel on Mac OS X

1- Installing Xcode and activate Xcode Command Line Tools
In order to install Laravel on Mac, you will need to download Xcode. You can download it at the
link below for free:
Apple Xcode²⁰
or
Apple Xcode on Apple app store²¹
After that, we go to Xcode -> Preference -> Locations button -> Select ‘Command Line Tools’ ->
Make sure to choose ‘Xcode 5.0’ -> Download and install the Command Line Tool from Apple
Developer website.
²⁰https://developer.apple.com/xcode
²¹http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?ls=1&mt=12
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 12

Style Vintage Theme

A tip for older Mac OS X

You should upgrade to Mavericks 10.9. If for some reasons you don’t want to upgrade, and
you don’t see the interface above, you can still install Command Line Tools by going to
Xcode -> Preference -> Downloads -> Install ‘Command Line Tools’

2- Installing PHP 5.4

We need to install a right PHP version to run Laravel. To do that, we have to use Terminal app, or
some other terminal emulator applications.

What is Terminal?
Terminal is terminal emulator provides an environment for Unix shells, which allows the
user to interact with the operating system through the command line interface. On Mac,
you can find it in Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.

Open Terminal and type in the below code to know which PHP version you’re using:

1 php -v

Cool, you will see something like this:

 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 13

1 PHP 5.4.17 (cli) (built: Sep 18 2013 14:31:13)

2 Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group

It means that you currently have PHP 5.4.17 on your machine. If you have PHP version 5.4 or newer,
then skip this section.

Using OS X Mavericks?
Mac OS X 10.9 ships with PHP 5.4.17 out of the box. So you can skip this part if you’re
using Max OS X 10.9. However, just run php -v to double check that you’re using a correct
PHP version.

If you see that you have an older PHP version or you don’t have PHP, then let’s install it. Type this
line or copy and paste in into the Terminal:

1 curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 5.4

Wait for while, type y and hit Enter if it asks you, then you paste the following line:

1 export PATH=/usr/local/php5/bin:$PATH

Done! if we check using php -v again, it will show that you have PHP 5.4.xx.
3- Installing Mcrypt PHP Extension
We’re going to install Mcrypt PHP Extension now.

What is Mcrypt?
Mcrypt is a file encryption method using secure techniques to exchange data.

Open Terminal, change directory (cd) to the home account and make a directory that you will work
in, call it mcrypt. You can do these things by typing into Terminal (line by line):

1 cd ~
2 mkdir mcrypt
3 cd mcrypt

This will make a folder called mcrypt in my home account folder, which is Users/∼YourUsername.
For example, I can find the mycrypt folder on my Mac at: Mac/Users/JV.
Get libmcrypt 2.5.8 from Sourceforge:
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 14

libmcrypt 2.5.8 from Sourceforge²²

Get the php code in a tar.gz or .bz2 format at:
Choose and download PHP code²³
Make sure to download a correct PHP version (same with your OS).
In case you don’t remember, you can check your PHP version using the command line:

1 php -v

Move both of these files that you downloaded into your working directory (mcrypt) and go back to
Terminal:

1 cd ~/mcrypt

Expand both files via the command line (or just double click them in the Finder and skip this part):

1 tar -zxvf libmcrypt-2.5.8.tar.gz

2 tar -zxvf php-5.4.17.tar.gz

Remove the compressed archives:

1 rm *.gz

Change directory into libmcrypt:

1 cd libmcrypt-2.5.8

Libmcrypt needs to be configured, enter:

1 ./configure
2 make
3 sudo make install

When you type sudo, usually it will ask for a password, enter your system password and move on.
You now have libmcrypt configured and libraries now installed, it’s time to make the mcrypt
extension. Enter:
²²http://sourceforge.net/projects/mcrypt/files/Libmcrypt/2.5.8/libmcrypt-2.5.8.tar.gz/download
²³http://php.net/releases/index.php
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 15

1 cd ../php-5.4.17/ext/mcrypt/
2 /usr/bin/phpize

The output should be:

1 Configuring for:
2 PHP Api Version: 20100412
3 Zend Module Api No: 20100525
4 Zend Extension Api No: 220100525

Autoconf Errors
If you see “Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation…” error occurs
after you try the following compile of mcrypt, then autoconf is not installed. Install it using
the following guide, otherwise you can skip it.

Go to Terminal, type:

1 cd ~/mcrypt
2 curl -O http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-latest.tar.gz
3 tar xvfz autoconf-latest.tar.gz
4 cd autoconf-2.69/
5 ./configure
6 make
7 sudo make install

After installing Autoconf, you need to go back to the folder mcrypt/php-5.4.17/ext/mcrypt, enter:

1 cd ~/mcrypt/php-5.4.17/ext/mcrypt
2 /usr/bin/phpize

You should see the output like this, without “Cannot find autoconf…” error:

1 Configuring for:
2 PHP Api Version: 20100412
3 Zend Module Api No: 20100525
4 Zend Extension Api No: 220100525

Good, make sure you’re still in the mcrypt folder, now enter:
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 16

1 ./configure
2 make
3 sudo make install

Done! You shoud see:

1 Installing shared extensions:/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20100525

The output

Last step, You need to enable mcrypt.so PHP extension. Open /etc/php.ini and add the line below at
the end of the file:

1 extension=mcrypt.so

If there is no php.ini file, then you need to make one from php.ini.default in the same location using
Terminal:

1 sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini

2 sudo chmod u+w /etc/php.ini

Then open the php.ini file by typing:

 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 17

1 sudo nano /etc/php.ini

or

1 sudo vi /etc/php.ini

View php.ini in nano

Make sure that you have the line below at the end of your php.ini:

1 extension=mcrypt.so

A note about editing php.ini

You can use a normal text editor to edit php.ini, but try to use nano or vi. It’s very easy to
learn.

Finally, restarting the Apache service to make it work:

 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 18

1 sudo apachectl restart

Congrats! You have installed Mcrypt PHP Extension!

4- Installing Composer
Open Terminal and then execute this command:

1 curl -s https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

If you see error: The detect_unicode setting must be disabled. Use this command instead:

1 curl -s getcomposer.org/installer | php -d detect_unicode=Off

This generates composer.phar (a PHP executable). Then run it:

1 php composer.phar

Final step, execute this command to easily access Composer everywhere on your system:

1 sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Well done! Now you can install Laravel!

5- Installing Laravel
When you have Composer configured, you can easily install and start using Laravel. We will install
our application on desktop, so go there by using this command:

1 cd desktop

Cool, now you’re at your desktop, you just need execute one command in the command line to
create a Laravel application,replacing learningLaravel with the name of your project:

1 composer create-project laravel/laravel learningLaravel --prefer-dist

After executing this command, Composer will download all components of Laravel, and put them
together into your application folder called learningLaravel. You will see something like this when
it finishes:
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 19

1 Writing lock file

2 Generating autoload files
3 Generating optimized class loader
4 Application key [qAAhzWNNhYnzAsVc0NzV19ocWnZICiBa] set successfully.

You can start to develop application right now!

6- Start your first app
When you have your app, you need to “start it” using Artisan - a Laravel’s command line interface.
It’s easy, first, navigate to your app folder:

1 cd learningLaravel

and then execute:

1 php artisan serve

Congrats! You will see this output:

1 Laravel development server started on http://localhost:8000

Open your web browser, and go to http://localhost:8000, enjoy your first site!

Your site is running on localhost:8000

 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 20

Having some errors?

Don’t hesitate to send me a message! I’ll be with you to solve the problem! There is an
easier method to set things up by using MAMP or XAMPP. But you should try to install it
manually like the above method, this way you can learn more.

Installing Laravel on Windows 7 + Windows 8

Install Laravel on Windows is a piece of cake! You can install it easily using XAMPP or WAMP.
So what is XAMPP or WAMP? Well, they’re a distribution that includes an Apache 2 web server,
integrated with the latest builds of MySQL, PHP and Perl. You can install them in just a few clicks.
I will show you how to install Laravel using XAMPP (using MAMP is very similar).
1- Installing XAMPP
Now, go to the website below, download XAMPP and install it:
XAMPP official website²⁴
You should choose installer, and install it just like installing a normal application. There is a
documentation about how to install it here:
How to install XAMPP²⁵
The cool thing is, Mcrypt comes by default with XAMPP or WAMP, so you don’t have to mess
around with it :D

There is also WAMP and XAMPP for Mac OS!

The great thing is, WAMP and XAMPP is also available for Mac OS. On Mac, WAMP is
called MAMP! Google it and use that method if you like.

2- Enable OpenSSL
Go over to php.ini (located in C:\xampp\php) and open it with a text editor. Find:

1 ;extension=php_openssl.dll

And remove the “;”, then save the file. So it should look like this:

²⁴http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
²⁵http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#522
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 21

1 extension=php_openssl.dll

Good, now restart the Apache.

3- Installing Composer
Now go to Composer site, download and install Composer-Setup.exe:
Composer official site²⁶
4- Make sure that you have httpd-vhosts.conf
We use httpd-vhosts.conf to create our virtual host. So let’s go to C:\xampp\apache\conf, and then
open httpd.conf file with your text editor. Search for:

1 # Virtual hosts
2 Includes "conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf"

It should look like that, if you see something like:

1 #Includes "conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf"

Let’s remove the # sign.

5- Installing Git Bash
To execute commands, you can use any tool, but I recommend you Git Bash. A very popular program
that is under active maintenance. It creates a prompt on Windows, which is similar to a UNIX-like
system. To install it, go to:
Git Bash²⁷
Download and install Git-1.8.4-preview20130916.exe (you can download a newer version, at the time
of writing, the current version is 1.8.4). When it asks something, you should accept the defaults.
5- Installing Laravel
Now you can install Laravel. First, go to C:/xampp/htdocs, create a folder called learninglaravel (or
any name that you like, just make sure to replace it at the codes below)
Good, now click the Windows or Start icon -> in the Programs list, open the Git folder -> open Git
Bash.
Nice, you can type some commands there to install Laravel. First, we go to the folder that we just
created, type this into Git Bash:

²⁶http://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md#installation-windows
²⁷http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list?q=label:Featured
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 22

1 cd C:/xampp/htdocs

and then use ls command to see what’s inside, type:

1 ls

You should see your folder there in the output, like this:

1 FF learningLaravel

Cool! Now go to that folder by using cd command:

1 cd learningLaravel

Finally, you can install Laravel into the folder by typing:

1 composer create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist

Composer will be going to download and install Laravel into that folder. After it’s done, you will
see something like this:

1 Writing lock file

2 Generating autoload files
3 Generating optimized class loader
4 Application key [qAAhzWNNhYnzAsVc0NzV19ocWnZICiBa] set successfully.

Good job, you have just installed Laravel. You can open your web browser and go to your site at
this address:
http://localhost/learningLaravel/public²⁸
If there are some errors, don’t worry, we will fix it soon.

Install Laravel in an easier way?

Actually, you can install and create the learningLaravel folder at a time by using this
command: “composer create-project laravel/laravel learningLaravel –prefer-dist”. If you
understand what I say, well done. If you don’t, don’t worry, you just need more time to
get familiar with it. You can also install Laravel using the new Laravel Installer method if
you like, there is a tutorial about it in this book.

6- Edit httpd-vhosts.conf to access Laravel

Now we have to edit the httpd-vhosts.conf file to access our site. Go to “C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra”,
open and edit the file. Copy and paste these lines into the end of the file:
²⁸http://localhost/learningLaravel/public
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 23

1 <VirtualHost *80>
2 DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/learningLaravel/public"
3 ServerName learningLaravel.dev
4 </VirtualHost>

What we’re doing here is putting the path to our application folder (learningLaravel) into
DocumentRoot. And set the ServerName to learningLaravel.dev. So we just only need to type
learninglaravel.dev into our web browser to access it!
Now you should restart the Apache using XAMPP Control Panel. Opening up the Xampp control
panel, clicking ‘Stop’ (next to ‘Apache’), waiting for it to stop, then clicking ‘Start’.
7- Last step! Edit the hosts file
Go to C:/Windows/System32/Drivers/etc and edit the hosts file. The hosts file require Adminis-
trator permission. So you need to open your notepad as Administrator (Ctrl -> Right Click -> Open
As Administrator), and then open the hosts file as Administrator.
Ok, put “127.0.0.1 learninglaravel.dev” into the hosts file, below this line:

1 127.0.0.1 localhost

You should have something look like this:

1 127.0.0.1 localhost
2 127.0.0.1 learninglaravel.dev

Save the file and… Congrats! You can now access your site using this link:
http://learninglaravel.dev²⁹
You should see this screen:
²⁹http://learninglaravel.dev
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 24

Your site is running on localhost:8000

8- Extra step
If you don’t see the screen above, instead it shows many project files like normal localhost does.
Follow these steps below to fix it:
First, you need to make sure that rewrite_module and vhost_alias_module modules are enabled.
The following lines should be uncommented in xampp/apache/conf/httpd.conf and in xampp/a-
pache/conf/original/httpd.conf, make sure to remove the # sign:

1 LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

2
3 LoadModule vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so
4
5 Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Update your httpd-vhosts.conf with the following:

 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 25

1 <VirtualHost *:80>
2 DocumentRoot "c:/xampp/htdocs/laravel/public"
3 ServerName learningLaravel.dev
4 ServerAlias www.learningLaravel.dev
5 </VirtualHost>

A New Faster Way to Install Laravel 4

Recently, Taylor Otwell has just released a new method to install Laravel 4 easier and faster! You
can now install Laravel using Laravel Installer.

This tutorial is for Mac Os X

This method is tested, and it’s working on Mac OS. Laravel Installer is still new, so in case
you can’t use it, don’t worry, please wait for a few days. You can still install Laravel using
Composer as always. If you’re using Windows, go ahead and try to install Laravel 4 using
this method, it’s pretty similar.

A little note: just remind that you must have PHP and Composer installed on your system to install
Laravel.
First, you need to download the Laravel installer PHAR archive at the link below:
Download Laravel Installer³⁰
Put it in your working folder, or your desktop. I put it on my desktop. If you’re doing the same, then
navigate to your desktop:

1 cd desktop

Good, you’re in the desktop. Now just type this single line to install Laravel in no time:

1 sudo php laravel.phar new web

If it asks for password, enter your system password.

Great! You just create a directory named web containing a fresh Laravel installation with all
dependencies installed.
³⁰http://laravel.com/laravel.phar
 A Guide to Install Laravel 4 26

Install Laravel using the new Laravel Installer

This method is much faster than using Composer!

For convenience, you can rename the laravel.phar file to laravel and move it to /usr/local/bin.
After that, you can create new Laravel apps everywhere on your system. To move laravel.phar to
/usr/local/bin, execute this command:

1 sudo mv laravel.phar /usr/local/bin/laravel

As you see, I use mv command to move laravel.phar on my desktop to /usr/local/bin and rename
the file to laravel. Ok, the last trick is, you need to set permissions for the file, then we can use it:

1 chmod +x /usr/local/bin/laravel

Well done! Now, everytime you want to create a new Laravel app. You just navigate to a place (for
example: desktop), and execute this command:

1 laravel new web

So cool! Right? Here is the output:

A Guide to Install Laravel 4 27

Install Laravel using new method

I’m writing this chapter!

I’m writing, please wait. If you have any ideas or want to learn something, don’t
hesitate to send me a message. If this book have helped you in anyway, then I would
really appreciate if you would share the URL to the book with your friends. It’s at
www.leanpub.com/learninglaravel³¹ or www.learninglaravel.net³² :D

³¹http://leanpub.com/learninglaravel
³²http://learninglaravel.net